Y/Project has closed down

Y/Project has announced its definitive closure today after failing to secure investors. Among the many closures of independent brands that have impacted fashion, including victims such as The Vampire’s Wife and Dion Lee, the French brand is perhaps the most illustrious name to bid farewell to the fashion scene. The brand will primarily be remembered for bringing one of the most multifaceted talents of contemporary fashion into the spotlight, Glenn Martens, who directed it for 13 long years, winning the ANDAM Award and the LVMH Prize, and succeeding co-founder Yohan Serfaty, for whom he had worked as an assistant. In the second half of 2024, the brand not only lost its other co-founder Gilles Elalouf but also CEO Pascal Conte-Jodra and Martens himself, who, after the enormous success of Diesel, could now be headed toward the creative direction of Maison Margiela. To add insult to injury, as revealed by WWD, the Hong Kong-based investment fund AA Investments had offered to purchase the brand for €45,000—a ridiculous amount on which the brand's executives declined to comment.

Now the brand will donate some of its most important archive looks to the world's most prestigious fashion museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the MoMu in Antwerp, Palais Galliera, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Without a doubt, a sad fate for a brand that especially in the past five years had not only managed to engage in dialogue with fashion heavyweights, collaborating with Jean-Paul Gaultier’s Haute Couture and dressing celebrities such as Rihanna and Kylie Jenner, but had also brought numerous young design enthusiasts closer to an unconventional and avant-garde aesthetic. It remains true, however, that its reputation was inseparably linked to that of Glenn Martens (one could even argue that over time, it was the designer who brought attention to the brand and not vice versa), and its survival would have likely been jeopardized by his departure regardless.

Unlike many other more or less historic brands kept alive through what could be defined as a “financial insistence” in a continuous cycle of closures and reboots, Y/Project was perhaps the one least deserving of receiving the proverbial axe. The cult status that many of its products had attained, such as various jeans models and trompe-l’oeil tops, might still not rule out a future reboot. And while the decision to close was undoubtedly forced by circumstances, it remains as bold as that made years ago by Raf Simons: it is better to end operations with dignity and leave the scene as an admired and respected guest than to sell out and ruin what was built over many years of hard work.